Despite these problems, the secretary filed favorable and sympathetic reports about the conditions he found in Siberian prison camps with the U.S. embassy and the Russian government, stressing optimism about future Association work for

In addition, Archibald Harte argued that the Russians abandoned their practice of sending their Central Power prisoners to live in Siberian villages and instead adopted large-scale concentration camps as retaliation against the German practice of incarcerating large numbers of Allied POWs in prison compounds. 2